"Miss Takamura, please move back inside the building so we can discuss this," a police officer yelled into his megaphone from the street below. His voice cracked slightly, whether from the strain of shouting or from emotion, it was hard to tell. "We don't want to have to try and pull you inside. We're asking for you to work with us."
The woman didn't move.
She couldn't move.
Every muscle in her body felt frozen, caught between the urge to step forward into nothingness and the desperate desire to step back into a life that had become unbearable.
The wind tugged at her clothes, at her hair, at her very soul, and for a moment, she wondered if it was trying to make the decision for her.
Below, the crowd had grown. Office workers on their lunch breaks craned their necks upward, some recording with their phones, others calling out encouragement or prayers. News vans were beginning to arrive, their satellite dishes extending like mechanical flowers blooming toward tragedy.
The whole scene felt surreal to her, as if she were watching it happen to someone else.
Suddenly, a voice rang out beside the police officer.
"Jumper?"
"Yeah."
The exchange was brief, the police man hadn't even seen who he had talked to.
Then came a burst of speed and wind that surged upward with such force it nearly knocked the hat off the officer, along with several other police men and women who were stationed at the site. Papers scattered, barriers shifted, and everyone looked up in surprise.
The woman felt the building shake slightly beneath her feet, and then...
"Hello, Takamura."
The voice was directly beside her now, on the roof. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, her knuckles white as she gripped the ledge.
This was it.
This was when they would grab her, drag her back, force her to continue existing in a world that felt like broken glass under her skin.
"I thought we might talk for a bit," the voice continued, surprisingly gentle. "I understand you've probably been going through a lot lately, and-"
Before the person could finish their sentence, before they could reach out and touch her, she exploded into words that had been building pressure inside her chest like steam in a kettle.
"Don't you dare touch me! That's what you want, isn't it?! Wait until I drop my guard and then you grab me and take me down there by force! Because you can! Because you heroes are stronger than me! Because you know I can't stop you!"
The words tore from her throat, accompanied by tears that had been falling all day, her eyes still closed tight against the world.
"You'll drag me back down there and everyone will applaud and say how wonderful it is, and then tomorrow I'll be right back where I started, except now everyone will know, everyone will stare, everyone will whisper-"
"Takamura," the voice interrupted softly. "I'm not a hero."
Something in the tone made her pause.
It was distinctly... juvenile.
Beside her stood a boy who couldn't have been more than fourteen years old. His blonde hair fell to his nape in an organized mess if that was possible, and his eyes were the same color as the sky above them.
A sword hung at his waist, in the most beautiful sheath she had ever laid her eyes on, not that she had seen many sheaths mind you.
She recognized him immediately from the news reports, the whispered stories, the blurry photos that never quite captured him clearly.
Arthur.
The name the news had given him, they had named after Arthur from Arthurian legend given the similarities.
He was an infamous vigilante who had been operating over the past four years, and yet he was nothing more than a child.
"You..." she breathed, her voice barely audible over the wind.
"Me," the boy said with a small, almost sad smile.
For a moment, they simply looked at each other. Below, she could hear the confusion of the crowd, the frustrated shouts of heroes who had arrived to help but found themselves inexplicably unable to reach the building. Some invisible barrier held them back, and she realized it had to be this boy's doing.
"Somebody said that when you give your word you never break it. Is it true?" she asked.
The boy stayed quiet for a moment, as if thinking his answer over.
"Is it!" she reiterated more forcefully, desperate for an answer she could trust.
"Yes," he finally replied, and something in his voice made her believe him.
She took a shaky breath, feeling as if she were about to make the most important bargain of her life.
"Then I want your word. I want your promise that you won't try to take me down by force... and that if I jump... if I choose to jump because it's my choice... you won't stop me. You won't let anyone else bring me down, no one else gets here..." Her voice cracked as she continued, "If you do that, I'll talk to you."
Arthur looked at her for a long moment, weighing her words, mulling them over in his mind.
"I give you my word," he said finally. "I won't stop you, and I won't let anyone take you down against your will."
The relief that flooded through her was unexpected. For the first time in months, someone was giving her control over her own life, even if that control meant choosing to end it.
From down below, Kamui Woods had arrived at the scene, his wooden limbs already extending as he listened to two police officers discuss the situation.
"I thought he was gonna bring her down. What's he doing up there?"
"It looks like he's... talking to her?"
"About what? The view?"
"I'll go up there," Kamui Woods declared, his arm slinging forward and growing as it stretched toward the top of the building. But as it neared the roof, it struck something invisible with a resounding clang that echoed across the street below.
More heroes began to arrive, Mt. Lady, Death Arms, others whose names she didn't know, but each one discovered the same thing.
They couldn't approach the building.
And atop that building, Takamura and Arthur talked.
"After I buried my mom," she began, her voice hollow with exhaustion, "I stood there after everybody else had left, and I thought... is this it? I mean, is this all there is? Working in a cubicle six days a week until I'm too old to do it anymore, then I die?"
As she spoke, the boy simply listened. She noticed his arm waver slightly, then she heard a muffled clang, like a whisper in the wind, she didn't know what it was, what she did know however was that his attention never left her face.
"Is that it?" she added, her hand reaching to her forehead as fresh tears formed in her already reddened eyes. "Is that what we're here for? What's the point of any of it?"
She went quiet, her hand falling to her side, her eyes closing, her head turned downward. She couldn't look at him, couldn't look at anyone.
Every time she tried, she saw judgment, pity, or worse... indifference.
"When I graduated high school," she began again, "I thought... we all thought... we're gonna go off and do great things. That we were gonna change the world. Save the world. If somebody had said 'hey, you're gonna pump gas your whole life,' or 'better get used to cleaning up after people because that's gonna be your whole life,' we would've laughed at them."
The tears came harder now, hot against her cold cheeks. "But that's exactly what happened, isn't it? I've been cleaning other people's messes for ten years. Making other people's coffee. Filing other people's reports. Living other people's dreams while mine just... died."
Her voice rose to a shout that cut through the wind. "It's not fair! NONE OF IT IS FAIR! AND DON'T YOU DARE TELL ME IT IS!"
She pointed at him accusingly, expecting the usual platitudes, the empty reassurances.
"I won't," Arthur replied calmly, "because you're right. It's not fair."
The simple acknowledgment caught her off guard.
The boy stayed quiet for a moment, as if carefully choosing his words. "But it's not unfair either... it just is."
"That's the best you can do?" she replied, a desperate, almost hysterical grin spreading across her face. "It's neither fair nor unfair, it just is?"
"Because that's the truth," the boy replied simply. "You're right when you say we all believe we can save the world when we're young. And sometimes we do, like All Might did. And sometimes..."
His head lowered slightly as he mulled it over, his arm wavering for just a moment as he blocked another hero trying to reach them. "Sometimes we don't. So you don't think about saving the world. You think about saving just one person, because sometimes that's enough. All I know is that we have to try. That's what life is. We try. We push back against the darkness just a little, we..."
"Can we..." she interrupted, pressing her palms against her temples, "can we just not talk about this anymore for a while? My head hurts. I've been crying all day. I just... I just want to rest for a bit."
"Okay," Arthur answered without hesitation. "You rest. I'll be here when you're ready to talk."
And so she crouched there on the rooftop, isolated from the world by the boy at her side who asked nothing of her except her presence. Evening came with its red hues coloring the sky, heroes and tried and heroes failed, eventually leaving the site one by one until only the police were left below.
Night fell not much later, bringing with it a chill that made her shiver in her thin business suit.
The boy remained by her side, never complaining, never checking his phone, never showing any sign of impatience.
The police had set up large floodlights directed at them, probably to keep an eye on the situation, though the harsh glare made her eyes water.
Finally, when her throat felt raw and her eyes burned from the combination of tears and artificial light, she spoke.
"Can you have them turn that off? It hurts my eyes."
Without a word, the boy's arm moved slightly. There was a series of sharp sounds from below, metal being cut, and suddenly the harsh lights disappeared, leaving them in the gentler glow of the city's ambient illumination.
"Better. Thank you," she said, rising slowly from her crouched position. Her legs were stiff and unsteady, and she had to grip the ledge for balance as she looked down at the street below. "Lots of people down there."
"Yes," Arthur said quietly. "I've seen people splattered on the sidewalk before. Are you sure you want to do that to them?"
The blunt question should have angered her, but instead it made her think. She pictured the police officers, the paramedics, the random pedestrians who would witness the impact. People who would carry that image with them for the rest of their lives.
"I don't know," she admitted, her voice small. "I feel like I don't know anything anymore. I don't know what to do..."
"Can I make a suggestion?" Arthur asked gently. "A friend of mine... many years ago, took her life. She was terminally ill, every day was an agony, and she decided one day that she knew, without question, that she would never have another happy day. And she... well, I guess you could say she clocked out early."
He paused, and she could hear the pain in his voice as he continued. "I understood. I didn't approve. Still don't. But I understood."
Fresh tears began to fall, but she didn't try to stop them. Someone else had felt this way.
"If you honestly believe in your heart of hearts," the boy continued, "that you will never, ever have another happy day... then step out into the air. I'll keep my promise. I won't stop you."
He turned his body toward her, extending his hand, the same hand that had been holding back an army of heroes, that had been protecting her right to choose.
"But," he said, his blue eyes meeting hers in the dim light, "if you think there is a chance, no matter how small, that there might be just one more happy day, then take my hand."
She stared at his outstretched hand, small and calloused, belonging to a boy who had probably seen more darkness than most adults ever would. Taking it would mean stepping back from the edge, but it would also mean stepping back into a life that had driven her to this point.
But maybe... maybe it would also mean stepping into something different. Something she couldn't see from where she stood now.
The woman took a step forward and...
With a trembling hand, took his.
The boy, although slightly shorter than her, seemed somehow much more substantial than his size suggested. When he hugged her close, it wasn't the performative embrace of someone doing their job, it was the genuine comfort of someone who understood exactly what she was feeling.
"It'll be alright," he whispered into her hair. "You're safe. You're safe."
All the emotions she had been holding back, the grief, the exhaustion, the overwhelming sense of futility, came pouring out as she cried into his shoulder. Between sobs, she whispered the only word that seemed to make sense anymore, each repetition quieter than the last as exhaustion finally claimed her.
"Okay...okay.... okay..."